AN ABRIDGED ACCOUNT OF BĀBUR’S TRANSACTIONS FROM THE BEGINNING OF A.H. 914 TO THE BEGINNING OF A.H. 925*
Revolt of THE Memoirs of Bābur are once more interrupted at a
very important crisis, and we are again left to glean, from
various quarters, an imperfect account of the transactions
that ensued. It is probable that Khwājeh Muhammed Ali,
who had just passed through the market-place, informed
Bābur that he had seen a gathering of Moghuls, and that
measures were taken to seize his person. This at least is
certain, that Bābur escaped the impending danger, and
regained his camp. The Moghuls who had been in Khosrou
Shah’s service were the most active agents in this conspiracy.
They do not appear ever to have co-operated
heartily with Bābur, who always speaks of them and their
race with strong marks of dislike and resentment.*
They had
combined with the other men of influence mentioned in the
Memoirs, and had agreed not only to raise Abdal Razāk
Mirza to the throne of Kābul and Ghazni, which had been
held by his father, Ulugh Beg Mirza, Bābur’s uncle, but
also to put him in possession of Badakhshān, Kunduz, and
Khutlān, and all the territories which had formerly been
held by Khosrou Shah. Such were the effects produced
in Bābur’s army by this sudden defection of so many men
of eminence, of different nations and tribes, that next
morning he could not muster in his whole camp more than
General
defection
of Bābur’s
troops.
five hundred horse. Great numbers of his followers and
soldiers had hastily retired to Kābul, under pretence of
taking care of their families.*
Bābur, enraged at these events, instead of retiring into the
hill-country, or shutting himself up in a fortress, appears to
have kept the field with his few faithful followers. He
made several furious assaults on the army of the rebels,
whom he intimidated by the bravery which he displayed.
Bābur computes the original number of the rebels at two or
three thousand men; but Ferishta relates that their number
rose to twelve thousand. In this reduced state of his
fortunes, he appears, for a while, to have assumed the
courage of despair, and to have given to the adventurous
gallantry of the soldier and the champion, the place which
he generally allowed the cool valour of the prince and the
Kills five
warriors in
single
combat.
general to hold. He exposed himself in every rencounter,
and attacked the insurgents wherever they could be found.
On one occasion he is said to have advanced before the line,
and challenged Abdal Razāk to single combat. The challenge,
we are told, was declined by the prince; but five champions
of the rebels having advanced in succession, and accepted
it in his room, they all fell, one after another, under the
sword of Bābur. Their names, which have been transmitted
to us by Ferishta and Khāfi Khan, indicate that they were
of different races. They were Ali Beg Shabkūr,*
Muhammed
Ali Sheibāni,*
Nazer Bahāder Uzbek, Yākūb Beg Bābur-jeng,
and Abdallah Safshiken. His military skill, his personal
strength, and his invincible spirit, scattered dismay among
the bands of the enemy, who equally admired and dreaded
him; and perhaps, while he seemed to be acting as an
inconsiderate young soldier, he really performed the part of
a sagacious general and of a hero. His enemies began
gradually to drop off; one defeat succeeded to another;
Abdal Razāk found death at the close of his short reign;
Recovers
his domi-
nions.
and Bābur saw himself once more the undisputed sovereign
of Kābul and Ghazni.*
When Khosrou Shah’s territories fell into the hands of Sheibāni Khan, the inhabitants of Badakhshān, a brave and hardy race, who inhabited a country everywhere mountainous, and in many places almost inaccessible, disliking the Uzbek government, had flown to arms in every quarter, and a number of petty chieftains in different districts had set up for independent princes. Of all these the most powerful was Zobeir, a man of no family, but who, by his conduct and valour, succeeded in reducing under subjection to him the greater number of the other insurgents. Khan A. D. 1509. Mirza, Bābur’s cousin,* had crossed from Kābul, A. H. 913, in order to try his fortune in that quarter, as Bābur has himself mentioned. His grandmother, Shah Begum, was the daughter of Shah Sultan Muhammed, the King of Badakhshān; so that the Mirza had probably some hereditary connexions in the country. His outset was not prosperous. His grandmother and Meher Nigār Khanum, his aunt, who followed in the rear of his army, were carried off by Mirza Abābeker Kāshghari; and Khan Mirza himself was defeated and obliged to surrender to Zobeir, who detained him in custody. Finally, however, Yūsef Ali, who had formerly been in the Mirza’s service, formed a conspiracy against Zobeir, whom he assassinated; when Khan Mirza was raised to the undisputed possession of the throne of Badakhshān, which he held till his death.*
A. D. 1510. In the year 916 of the Hijira, an event occurred which
Quarrel of
Sheibāni
Khan and
Shah Is-
māel.
Bābur had no influence in producing, but which promised
the most favourable change on his fortunes. Sheibāni Khan,
after the defeat of Badīa-ez-zemān and the sons of Sultan
Hussain Mirza, had overrun Khorasān with a large army.
Some parties of his troops, in the course of their incursions,
had entered and committed devastations on territories
claimed by Shah Ismāel, who at that time filled the Persian
throne; and he had even sent an army to invade Kirmān.*
Shah Ismāel, having subdued the Turkomāns in Azarbaijān,
had reduced under one government the various provinces
of Persia to the west of the desert, which for so long a series
of years had been divided into petty principalities. On
receiving information of these aggressions, he immediately
Their cor-
respond-
ence.
sent to Sheibāni Khan ambassadors, who carried letters,
remonstrating, but with great courtesy, against the aggressions
which had occurred within the boundaries of his
dominions. The Uzbek prince, rendered haughty by long
success, returned for answer, that he did not comprehend
Shah Ismāel’s meaning; that, for his own part, he was a
prince who held dominions by hereditary descent; but that,
as for Shah Ismāel, if he had suffered any diminution of his
paternal possessions, it was a very easy matter to restore
them entire to him; and he at the same time sent him the
staff and wooden begging-dish*
of a mendicant. He added,
however, that it was his intention one day to go the pilgrimage
of Mekka, and that he would make a point of seeing
him by the way. Shah Ismāel, who was descended of a
celebrated dervīsh, and who prided himself on his descent
from the holy Syed, affected to receive the taunt with
patient humility. He returned for answer, that if glory or
shame, here or hereafter, was to be estimated by the worth
or demerit of ancestors, he would never think of degrading
his forefathers by any comparison with those of Sheibāni
Khan; that if the right of succession to a throne was
decided by hereditary descent only, it was to him incomprehensible
how the empire had descended through the various
dynasties of Peshdādians, Kaiānians, and the family of
Chingiz,*
to Sheibāni himself. That he too intended making
a pilgrimage, but it was to the tomb of the holy Imām
Reza*
at Meshhad, which might afford him an opportunity of
meeting Sheibāni Khan. He sent him a spindle and reel,
with some cotton, giving him to understand that words were
a woman’s weapons; that it would become him either to
sit quietly in his corner, busied in some occupation that
befitted him, or to come boldly into the field to meet his
enemy in arms, and listen to a few words from the two-tongued
Zulfikār.*
‘Let us then fairly try’, concluded
Shah Ismāel, ‘to which of the two the superiority belongs.
You will at least learn that you have not now to deal with
an inexperienced boy.’*